If law enforcement is anywhere close to how interested they were in digging through posted photos/video as they were at other times recently, a lot of them will probably wish they'd been censored before the evidence got archived.

The difference is during the BLM/ANTIFA riots, people were doing much more serious stuff. One kid got bagged because he threw a pipe bomb over the fence at federal agents (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm_lZxmPxUU) and another one where a guy hit federal agents with a hammer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs). There was another situation where some lawyers (not kidding) threw a Molotov cocktail into a police car that had police actually in it.

And police did use images to track down people who did none of those things.

They were prosecuted.

I think this is a functional side effect of their communities. I’ve watched it happen on a smaller scale numerous times where people evict critical folk from their community. What you end up with is a snowballing monoculture which believes it is right because there is nothing to test ideas against.

This usually decays into a right mess as is outlined.

This is nothing to do with tech. It’s closer to burning witches who are undesirable in your community. It makes your community broken.

It happens in the left-wing as well. Reddit used to be a place where left-wing and right-wing could discuss stuff but then the left-wing got so hostile at "right-wingers" that they started banning them. So the right-wing people left and simply made their own communities off reddit. Well guess what happens next? Rampant conspiracy theories, more violent rhetoric and so on. So the right wing becomes more radicalized.

For this Jan 6th march, I saw many people on right wing websites saying they wanted to fight BLM/ANTIFA people and give them the beat down basically.

It’s not related to political wings at all and is self polarising. There are isolated factions of railway modellers, hairdressers, runners, cyclists and school mums as well!

We’re a tribal species. This just allows us to execute our base instincts quicker.

It’s stupid really.

On politics I refuse to align with any ideology, only policies. There’s no us and them argument then, just the merit of the policy to consider.

I don't think that makes you very popular right now, but it is of course the better course.

Yes it’s not a vote winning strategy. Did I just trip on a problem there? Most certainly.

I think tech has its responsibilities, specifically social media companies that took sides and banned people for allegedly promoting violence.

Sometimes letting people vent is a good idea. They tend not to torch neighborhoods.

If you think there is a mass that will get influenced and radicalized, it is probably only due to legislators and companies trying to police people into a narrow corridor of opinions.

To a degree. I think citizens have their responsibility as well. Back in the 90s I had a regular spot in Cambridge UK verbally attacking the lunatics promoting their fringe nonsense in the city centre.

The issue here again isn’t technology but taking ideas as verbatim and lack of critical reasoning. This ultimately leads to people seeking kinship with idiots and frauds rather than dismantling their ideas carefully and ridiculing them.

The issue is as always: education. Education is certainly promoted by the tech sector.

I’m not defending them here for reference, merely suggesting that the issues are human and transcend the platform.

How do you feel about the violent insurrection on our nation's Capitol that trump supporters perpetrated? I think that's pretty sad.